I remember NewFM doing it well before Triple M and know someone who still has the plaque they received as a winner which has NewFM logo on it and was early 2000’s if i remember correctly. By the looks of Facebook its going off this time round. So you are right by saying Best of has been done previously by many stations. Hot Tomato and Hit Central Coast recently ran it also.
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Will be interested to see what happens with the old Charlestown studios, since its only just up the road from me.
I really hope the Gosford stations don’t move up to Newcastle too, the Central Coast deserves to have locally based radio stations.
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Central Coast has always been shafted. As far as i know they never had their own TV Station either. Had to rely on Sydney and Newcastle
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They will not be moving to Newcastle. It’s against the licence. They will remain on the Coast, with local staff. This is the second time this publication has made that up randomly. Not happening.
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I hope you’re right…
I always thought that too, and I raised that point in the Super Radio Network convo about Coffs Harbour 2HC afternoon programs (their only local content) being broadcast out of Grafton, and apparently it’s not against the rules to do that… the 3 hours per day only has to be relevant to the area, not actually having to be broadcast from that area.
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That’s correct, it doesn’t have to be broadcast from within the licence area, as long as it’s “relevant” to the area.
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The old Charlestown studios have been up for sale for a number of weeks now, but I never bothered to post here about that as they haven’t been the KO & NX studios for a long time, & SCA don’t own them, they were sold years ago when SCA moved into Newcastle. They were up for lease, but I’m not sure anyone ever leased them, probably the owner can’t afford to have the building sitting there empty any longer so is selling.
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I find it amazing how far the Newcastle commercial signals travel in other directions, given that you can’t hear them in most parts of Sydney which is much closer. I know there is a 2kW restriction to the south. If there wasn’t the co channeling issue with Wollongong, I assume you would receive them as patchy in Sydney like with the ABC fms.
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I think the 2kw restriction is as much about minimising overspill to the Central Coast moreso than the Wollongong/Highlands co-channel issue. Reception down that way would definitely be better without that null.
Yes, the signals are definitely better up the Valley and towards to Mid North Coast with the full 20kw in play.
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I am in Melbourne now and Bendigo is a similar distance as Sydney to Newcastle. You can still get fairly good reception of the Bendigo stations in most parts of Melbourne
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Bendigo is kind of similar to Newcastle in that respect, where the power to the south is a lot lower than it is to the north (with the transmitter being on the Melbourne side of town).
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Is this an ACMA database error, or is Triple M/2KKO now only licenced for 8kW DA?
https://web.acma.gov.au/rrl/licence_image.extract_pdf?pLICENCE_NO=10276955/1
New and Hit still listed as 20kW.
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I’ve noticed that before… must be an error… no logical reason, and in car reception/coverage doesn’t seem to be much different from the other 2 commercials.
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True. The Bendigo radio license area is quite vast too!
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That changed years ago when they replaced the transmitters (back in about 2016-2017), they used to have two 10kW transmitters I think they were, running at about 7-8kW for 20kW ERP with antenna gain.
They were at end of life so got replaced with a 5kW & a 2.5kW (backup) transmitter, from what I’ve heard.
I have never been able to get confirmation on why or if this licence spec is legitimate from anyone, even SCA techs.
Neither of their antennas (main & backup) were replaced or changed, so they are still running about but probably a little under 20kW ERP on the 5kW main transmitter, obviously their backup power will be down on what it originally was, but as for those licences, I have no idea, how or why they came about?
At this time of change, someone must have told or mentioned something to ACMA & that’s when these licences popped up, which I can only guess is based on ERP from both antenna gains & the new transmitter powers?
I believe the NX transmitters were replaced with the same as KO at around the same time, but their licence specs never changed, so I don’t know why? Both KO & NX use a 4 bay antenna, NEW on the other hand runs 5kW transmitter into a 6 bay antenna, so it has higher antenna gain for the same transmit power therefore a higher ERP, antenna system losses between all 3 stations would be very similar & negligible in difference to each other as far as ERP calculations are concerned.
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Thanks, NEW seems to run a wider carrier too, bleeds a lot more at +/- 0.2 than the others do.
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The old tech used to run it at 120% peak mod when I was at SRN, maybe no one has ever turned it down and it is still at 120%
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Why am I not surprised?
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Analogue TV would be 100kW ERP vision carrier and 20kW audio carrier.
The Newcastle FMs pretty much covered the sites that NBN would’ve once had off air reception for, all the high spots mentioned and many more, including the upper Hunter translator sites.
Remember, anywhere with a quality band II TV antenna for NBN 3 should receive the FM signals, such as is seen in the Mid Coast Council area.
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